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Has your business gone stagnant and you’re wondering why it isn’t growing? There are probably some things you’re missing out on. In this episode, Nate Woodbury is going to talk about 5 things that could be hindering the growth of your business.
Scott, why is my business not growing?-Well because you’re the boss. Nate. why is my business not growing? -Scott you haven’t identified your ideal client. So, if your business isn’t growing, it’s probably because of one of these 5 things that we’re going to share in this video. Let’s jump right in. The first reason that I’ve experienced times where my business hasn’t been growing versus when it is growing is when a business… When you’re working in your business not on your business. Do you know what I mean by that? -Hmm, yes. Yes, I do. I understand it conceptually. I can’t necessarily put it into words. But that makes sense. -Okay. Well like somebody who works in their business could be a dentist and they’re the one drilling the teeth. -Right. You’re busy with the day-to-day. You’re working in the business as opposed to the overall vision of where it’s supposed to be going and what’s happening, yeah. -If… With a YouTube channel, if I’m filming all day and then I’m editing all night, I don’t have time or brainpower to think about how to grow my business or even really come up with great new ideas just because I’m working in the business. And that’s usually the biggest… One of the biggest factors of why your business isn’t growing is because we haven’t systematized things enough. We’re spending so much time just working in it that we’re really not working on it. If you want to tip, learn more how to systematize that I recommend the book the E-Myth Revisited. You hear me talk about that quite a lot. -Yeah, yeah. It must be a really big book. -It’s… It’s an amazing book. And I recommend that you read it Scott. -You want me to read something? Not just listen to it? -I know that you prefer to read the… -I like to read I think that does your brain better. -But Michael Gerber, the author of the book, he does like the sound of his voice. And so, if you listen to… -Oh, gosh. There’s one reason right there to read it. -Alright. Reason number 2 is that your business isn’t scalable. Now maybe you’ve just set it up in a way where you can’t take on more customers or clients. At a certain point, my business is there right now because I’m currently doing all the filming. And until I get more people to help me with the filming side of things, I can’t grow it. -So many hours in a day and so many days in a month that you can physically be doing something, yeah. -So, it just might simply be a matter of scalability. -You might have to fly some of your Filipino team over here to live and be camera people. -That’d be cool. -Right? I’m just trying to… -Would you guys like that? -That’s all. Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe they wouldn’t like it here. -They seem pretty happy where they are. -It’s a nice place. Alright. But I digress. -Alright. Let’s get to… Let’s get to one that might be a little bit hurtful. But you know, your business isn’t growing. People aren’t finding you. You’ve got this amazing business idea. You’ve got this amazing product or this this fantastic service that’s so helpful. -Yeah. And your marketing skills sucker. -Yeah. I mean, people just aren’t finding you. It’s like… You know, in the olden days when we didn’t have the internet, we had to put our businesses on a busy street corner or a public street where lots of people are walking by. Well, imagine we create this amazing restaurant or this amazing store but we put it back hidden where nobody can see it. -Right. -Well that’s essentially what happens when we have a website that doesn’t get any traffic. It’s just people aren’t aren’t seeing it. People don’t know how to find you. -Yeah. -And that needs to be fixed. -What do you do? -Well, you hear me talk a lot about YouTube. There’s a lot of things we talked about about LinkedIn. Those are 2 great easy ways that you can create content that… Like with YouTube, you create a how-to video. People are asking a question that you have the expertise for. So you create a video answering their question. Somebody in India or somebody in Ohio, you know, has that question. They now find you, they see you as that expert and now you have a potential customer in front of you. -Yeah, you got exposure to your, you know, your expertise and possibly your services that you’re offering or whatever else. It’s a beginning. It’s a way to get exposure. -So… And we can talk a lot more about a variety of different ways of marketing. But since if your business isn’t growing, you’re just… There’s not people that are finding you. You don’t have enough exposure. So you need to… You need to find a way to market your business. -Can you tell we’re on video 29 of 70? We got to get our energy up. Let’s talk about the ideal clients, right? Because isn’t that what it is? You tell me. Haven’t found you, haven’t identified your ideal client. What do you mean by that? I mean, do I just want one client? -I can tell you… I can tell you a story with this one. So, years ago, when my company offered website design as a service, at first, I offered this service to all small business owners. And I wasn’t honed in on my ideal client. And I didn’t know who that was. Maybe had some guesses. But I would help restaurant owners and dentists and attorneys and accountants. I would help coaches and speakers and Mentors. I didn’t know the difference. And I would find that I’d be on the phone with some and 5 minutes would go by and I’d just be checking the time like and I really just I don’t want to help this person. That’s just how I felt. -You don’t like talking on the phone as we’ve all…. -But I turned but there are some people that I would be on the phone with an hour would go by and I’d be like, “Really? An hour’s gone by? This has been fun.” So, one is I really had to find why…? What was the difference? And I found that I really like working with influencers. People who they are their product or service. They have an expertise to share. Like coaches, like speakers, like Mentors. That that’s just me. And I also, you know, I catered my services to services that would help them. But it’s really important to, you know, to narrow down your audience. Not just offer your services to everybody because if you’re… Because if your services are available to everybody, you’re not going to sell to anybody. -Okay, yeah. -So, in my case today, I work with influencers that have an existing business, that have a following. And let’s say I’m going to do a marketing campaign on LinkedIn. I am NOT going to target those that are interesting…. Interested in knitting. Or auto repair or basketball and learning how to jump higher. I’m going to target influencers that want to grow their tribe in a bigger way. So the more narrow and specific. If I know that I work better with men or women, you know, one or one or the other then I can focus on… -You can be all things to people. It’s kind of the old adage. The shotgun approach to finding customers. It doesn’t… Yeah, it doesn’t it doesn’t set you up for who you are or play to your strengths. You know, like you say. We talk a lot about doing research. Research, research. Finding things and drilling down. You know, but figuring out, spending some time. In another video, we talked about spending it almost an entire day figuring out who this ideal client is. You know, in terms of time spent. 8 hours racking your brain. Consulting with other people. Who is it that I’m really, really going to fit comfortably with. I’m going to be able to over deliver and really please this one client. And then from there, I’ll go, “Well, there’s enough of those one clients that I can make a living at this.” -So, the fear is… But if I only target these clients. And what about this client over here that I would also really like to have? But imagine this: If this client, client A. My ideal client comes to my website and my website says, “Well, I can help you with YouTube but I can help you with LinkedIn and I help you with Twitter and I help you with Instagram and I can help design your website and I can help make a video and I can help write the music for it and I can paint pictures for you.” Client A, although it’s a perfect client for me and I might be able to help them really well. They’re just going to say, “Man, this is a guy does everything which means he’s not the person.” -He’s not a specialist for the one thing that I really want. -Yeah. But if he’s… If he’s looking for help with building a YouTube following, he comes to me and my website says… -“I specialize in building YouTube following.” -And then there’s examples, there’s testimonials. -Yeah. Leonardo da Vinci was fantastic for his time. But you know, the Renaissance men, Renaissance people of today. You know, they’ve really got to be… You have to be able to prove like certifiably that you are the best in all 6 of those areas. And then will come flocking to you. But most of us just go, “You’re great at painting ceilings. And you’re great at that and the other stuff, sorry Lenny, you’re not that good at.” We, just want you to paint our ceiling here in this Sistine Chapel. I’m just dragging on this beautiful, little… Is a threat of a me… That’s what I’m good at. Saying literally… -So, we’ve actually only got one more point. This is one more important one. If your business isn’t growing, you probably don’t have client testimonials. Alright, good, good reviews or something like that. Now, if you’ve narrowed in to your ideal target audience, to your avatar and you’ve done well for them, then you can create a portfolio. You can get some testimonials from them. If you don’t have any… Because we live in a society where we like to look at reviews. When I buy a product on Amazon… -Of course. -…I look at how many stars it has and how many people have voted to give the four and a half stars or whatever. -How many billions does Yelp make just from, you know, people sharing their own, their own reviews and opinions. -So if I go to a website of somebody that’s got a service that they provide, I’m going to dig through and say, “Okay, how legit is this company? Do they have other customers? Because like can I find something that shows who they work with? That shows a sample of what they’re gonna do for me.” I really need to see that. So, if you don’t have something like that, you don’t have a portfolio. You don’t have client testimonials. That might be one of the biggest reasons why your business isn’t growing. And by the way, may I just say candidly. Some clients will absolutely agree to do a testimonial but they never have the time to write it. So half the time or more, they’re just going to say, “Write some things down and then I’ll review it and I’ll sign off on it.” I mean truly, you’ll get that. I mean if it’s a raving, raving customer, they can’t wait to write you a letter. But a lot of them if the little nudge. If they allow you to kind of say what you want them to say. -And I’ve done before. A lot of times… You want to make it legit. But it’s easy. -Right. -You can say, you know, “Nate is great about this, this and this.” And you write a few sentences that are really like… -And you submit it to them. -They say, “Hey, is this something you would say about me?” -Yes of course. You put my name on it. Exactly. It’s nothing wrong, it’s not unethical or immoral. It’s… They’re still calling the shots. But you know, it does facilitate the process if you go, “I can help you come up with a few things. Because you’re a busy person.” You know. So just saying. -So I recommend it. On LinkedIn, you know, you can get people to review you. Right? Is that what it’s called a review or…? -Uh, yeah. The little… Yeah. I think they are LinkedIn reviews. -There’s a couple different ways that… -Recommendations. -Recommendations. You can… You can get that directly right here on LinkedIn. I recommend doing that. I recommend doing a recommendation. -It’s like a metarecommendation. -I also recommend that you like this video. Share it with other people on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe. On LinkedIn, make sure you follow. -Or me, Scott Christopher. I’m on LinkedIn. See you next time.